I agree this is important and we should do this. But like, haven’t we been doing this the whole time? “impartiality” (the idea that equivalent interests are equally morally deserving—or something like that) is one of the three main things that get emphasised in basically every intro fellowship.
I think internationalism in particular, as a consequence of impartiality, deserves more emphasis because it explains a lot of where EA differs from other perspectives on doing good. I don’t think this has been emphasised in most recent news articles on EA.
I guess the question is, is internationalism something worth pointing out or having a concept for, or is it just a byproduct that naturally follows from”impartiality”?
After all, many boundaries are crossed as a consequence of some degree of “impartiality” (e.g. the act of people helping others might cross family, social circle, neighborhood, town, city, region, province/state/territory/intranational division, class, ethnicity/race/ancestry, hemisphere, time zone, generational, and in the case of animal activists, even species, boundaries).
But it’s not like every time any of these boundaries (which in principle are too numerous and too arbitrary to count, even if some are enforced, legally, socially etc. and others not so much) are crossed by would be do-gooders, they get flagged as noteworthy (e.g. we don’t always call out helping people in a different city, inter-regionally or inter-ethnically as too strange, unless, perhaps you’re living in a society of strong cross-city, region or ethnic tensions and then, crossing over to help the “other” marks you as unusually heroic or a “good Samaritan”).
Naming “internationalism” as a special kind of boundary-crossing would seem to imply it’s a particularly significant one, among many others, because the barriers are exceptionally high.
I agree this is important and we should do this. But like, haven’t we been doing this the whole time? “impartiality” (the idea that equivalent interests are equally morally deserving—or something like that) is one of the three main things that get emphasised in basically every intro fellowship.
I think internationalism in particular, as a consequence of impartiality, deserves more emphasis because it explains a lot of where EA differs from other perspectives on doing good. I don’t think this has been emphasised in most recent news articles on EA.
I guess the question is, is internationalism something worth pointing out or having a concept for, or is it just a byproduct that naturally follows from”impartiality”?
After all, many boundaries are crossed as a consequence of some degree of “impartiality” (e.g. the act of people helping others might cross family, social circle, neighborhood, town, city, region, province/state/territory/intranational division, class, ethnicity/race/ancestry, hemisphere, time zone, generational, and in the case of animal activists, even species, boundaries).
But it’s not like every time any of these boundaries (which in principle are too numerous and too arbitrary to count, even if some are enforced, legally, socially etc. and others not so much) are crossed by would be do-gooders, they get flagged as noteworthy (e.g. we don’t always call out helping people in a different city, inter-regionally or inter-ethnically as too strange, unless, perhaps you’re living in a society of strong cross-city, region or ethnic tensions and then, crossing over to help the “other” marks you as unusually heroic or a “good Samaritan”).
Naming “internationalism” as a special kind of boundary-crossing would seem to imply it’s a particularly significant one, among many others, because the barriers are exceptionally high.